I am doing my final project right now.
I am just wondering how I can a real old black and white movie effects?
so far I try to add more grain, lines,levels, tilted etc but its just you know
not that like real 35mm or old film quality because what I am try to achieve is to make the
audience feel that this real 35mm old black and white movies **like alfred hitchcock**

I dound some tutorial at creative cow but the result is not as organic as I want.

any suggestion? or do I need to blow it the final piece into 35mm?
but thats gonna coz me a lot I guess.

scrimski

02-18-2006, 10:23 AM

First, with what footage do you start? DV, Beta, MiniDV, Hi8, VHS, whatever?

Film has a different framerate(24 fps) than video(29,97 fps I guess since you are from Canada) so this would be my first step. Deinterlacing and changing the framerate.
Film responds different to light then video does, it has a much larger range of contrast(sorry for my english). Just increasing the contrast for the whole footage won't fix the thing, you need to set up masks and adjustment layers for different ranges of luminance.

Don't work on yn single layer, I found out that you achieve more filmlike looks if you colorize adjust a cloned layer of your footage above the original layer with different blend modes and transparencies looks much better and more conveincing then just slamming tons of filters and fx on a single layer.

Grain, scratches and all that need to be used wisely in order to avoid a cheap faked look, get a reference of what you try to achieve, b/w movies have changed a lot in the time of their use, they don't look all the same, so get one example of good quality and stick to it.

Prototype_Angel

02-18-2006, 07:47 PM

Hi!

thanks for the reply :)

only I don't quite get this part
"if you colorize adjust a cloned layer of your footage above the original layer with different blend modes and transparencies"
perhaps you can explain more about it.

What I am trying to achieve is the old 60s 0r 70s black and white plus I want a single color on it **like the sin city with more old grainy scratchy movies**

what the client want is in video format but make it looks like a old films looks a like.
So, should I change the farme rate?

sorry for keep asking!

beenyweenies

02-24-2006, 04:53 AM

Hi!

thanks for the reply :)

only I don't quite get this part
"if you colorize adjust a cloned layer of your footage above the original layer with different blend modes and transparencies"
perhaps you can explain more about it.

What I am trying to achieve is the old 60s 0r 70s black and white plus I want a single color on it **like the sin city with more old grainy scratchy movies**

what the client want is in video format but make it looks like a old films looks a like.
So, should I change the farme rate?

sorry for keep asking!

It's pretty tough to get an organic old-film look. Even the more expensive plugins that do this feel fake. You just need to look at it from the perspective of defining what makes old film "feel" old from a technical perspective. For example, the older film stocks required tons of light to expose, which introduced two issues. First, most old footage has very harsh lighting that is very high key and high contrast. Second, they had to leave the shutter open longer to allow more light into the camera, so you can visibly see a shuttering or flutter effect where the footage rapidly fades in and out. This is very subtle and should barely be noticeable. Grain and scratches are kind of an overly-hyped way of getting that old look. Because these films were so overlit to the point of nearly being overexposed, the grain is not all that noticeable (grain is a side effect of under-exposed footage). Another factor is that the old movies were big on vanity, and so softening effects were used WAY too often (similar to adding a lens flare to 3d animations - don't do it). They did this by smearing vaseline on the lens, but there is an easier way in AE. Here's a few ideas that may get you there:

1. Harsh lighting - add an adjustment layer with a levels filter applied. Crank the highlights, bring up the blacks and reduce the midtones somewhat. If this doesn't do it, try duplicating your footage layer and putting it in "screen" mode over the original footage layer to get it feeling more hot.
2. Shuttering effect - there are many ways to do this, but one idea is using an expression to link the opacity of the footage to some audio track's waveform, such as a helicopter or something equally repetitious. You'd have to be careful not to over-do it, though
3. Avoid simulated scratches and even grain if you can. it's pretty overdone, and only says "this video is trying to look like old footage." If you must add grain, go real easy since this more closely matches true old footage.
4. for the vanity lens effect, duplicate your footage layer, add a very slight amount (1-5 pixel) of the fast blur effect, and set the layer to be in "screen" mode. Adjust blur to taste but go easy!

You should modify the frame rate to be 24fps, but that is very complex to do convincingly without a plugin.

Prototype_Angel

02-26-2006, 06:51 PM

Thanks dude :D

that's really help!

its seems a lot of work but well I can try it out and if ts failed at least, I can learning something worth from it :)
** I am doing it for the sake, I want my portfolio looks good**

Integrity

02-26-2006, 08:19 PM

I remember reading somewhere that old black and white film was the most sensitive to the blue part of the spectrum. So maybe another added suggestion is to use the Color Mixer filter and use mostly the blue channel before you add all the level and other effects.

beenyweenies

03-01-2006, 01:43 AM

I remember reading somewhere that old black and white film was the most sensitive to the blue part of the spectrum. So maybe another added suggestion is to use the Color Mixer filter and use mostly the blue channel before you add all the level and other effects.

That's a good idea! I would agree.

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